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"Apart from divorcing my rat bastard husband, I'm all right."
The women all around them still chatted as if everything were perfectly normal. Sarah scrambled to find an appropriate response, but really, there wasn't one. Catherine shrugged, a show of nonchalance that Sarah didn't buy.
"Welcome home," Catherine said before sitting down on a couch in the opposite corner.
Sarah hadn't even known her friend had been married. Then again, she hadn't gone to any of their high school reunions or registered as part of their class on any social-networking sites.
Dorothy tapped her wineglass several times with a knitting needle. "Everyone," she said authoritatively, "please say hello to Sarah, Denise's daughter." The woman's eyes twinkled. "Even if you already know each other from her years growing up here, be sure to tell her something unique and memorable about yourself."
Sarah looked up from her spot behind the register. She had hoped to be able to sit there and fade into the background while the knitting group did their thing. But when Dorothy scooted over on the couch and patted the seat beside her, she knew she was cornered and cornered good.
"Sarah and I have already met," Helen said, "but just to be sure you don't forget me, you should know that I have never so much as stuck a toe into the lake and never plan to."
Sarah was stunned by this admission. "Why not?"
"I had an unfortunate incident with a swimming pool when I was a child."
"But swimming in the lake is incredible." From the time Sarah could walk, she'd loved to run off the end of her parents' dock and cannonball into the water, whether eighty degrees at the height of summer or somewhere in the sixties in the late spring and early fall. She was surprised by a fierce--and sudden--urge to run out of the store, strip off her clothes, and go running off a dock, any dock, just so she could experience that glorious moment when she hit the water.
"I'm sure it is," Helen said regretfully before turning the floor over to the middle-aged woman sitting next to her. "Your turn, Angie."
"I have four little monsters at home," Angie said with a smile, "and were it not for the fact that I knew I was going to be able to escape to this group after a weekend when none of them would stop screaming, I might very well have had an unfortunate incident of my own in the lake. On purpose."
Everyone laughed, but Sarah struggled with the right response. It had been years since she'd known the comfort of being around other women. At work, she was primarily surrounded by men, and given her rule about no emotional entanglements in the office, Sarah spent the bulk of her time with people who were pretty much just professional acquaintances.
"Sarah and I just met at the door," Rosa said when everyone turned to let her introduce herself. "And I know I promised not to talk your ear off anymore," she said with a smile, "but I just have to say again that, in so many ways, your family's store saved me." Her smile faltered slightly. "I was trying so hard to figure out how to deal with the mess my life had become--" Everyone scowled as they silently recalled the nude photo scandal, when pictures of her had been illegally taken and given to the press. "I was so confused, so conflicted, when the next thing I knew, here I was, standing in your amazing store, being told in no uncertain terms by your grandmother and mother that I didn't have to hide anymore. That I could start fresh and hold my head high. No matter what anyone else said."
"Rosa did the embroidery on my top," Helen said, holding out her wrists so that they could see the gorgeous needlework around her cuffs. "I took her class and tried to do it myself, but I get so much pleasure from looking at her artistry every time I look down at my shirt."
"Wow." Sarah looked back at Rosa, even more impressed now than she'd already been. Few people she knew had been able to reinvent themselves the way this woman had. "Did you work from a pattern?"
Looking a little embarrassed by all the praise, Rosa shook her head. "I'd much rather just stitch the pictures I see in my head. Anyway," she said, clearly wanting to turn the spotlight away from herself, "I think you're next, Catherine."
"Sarah and I go way back." Catherine had been smiling at Rosa, but her smile dropped as she turned to Sarah. "She doesn't need me to bore her with stories about how things have gone since high school."
Before Sarah could protest that she was, in fact, interested, another woman said, "I'm Christie Hayden." She had golden hair, startlingly green eyes--and a sparkling diamond engagement ring on her finger. "I help run the inn on the lake, and it is such a pleasure to meet you. I completely adore your mother and grandmother."
It took Sarah a few moments to put together the ring on Christie's finger with the information that she worked at the inn. "Oh my gosh, you're Wesley's fiancee!" Sarah impulsively threw her arms around Christie before she could overthink the action. "You know our grandmothers are sisters, don't you?"
"I do," Christie said with a big smile. "It's really great to finally meet more of his family. He always has such fun stories about the mischief you two got up to when you were little kids."
Sarah hadn't thought about those childhood days in a long time, but Wesley was right--they'd had a great time as little kids running wild around the lake. Before she'd decided to take everything much more seriously. Before she'd decided she couldn't stay here. "I was so happy for him when he let me know he was engaged. I'll make sure to go by to congratulate him in person while I'm in town."
"And what about you, Sarah?" Dorothy asked. "What brings you back to town?"
Sarah froze. She didn't want to lie to these women, but she needed to sit down and talk about her project with Calvin first. He would know the best way to present her building plans to the townspeople. Perhaps if she'd come back to town more since high school, it wouldn't seem so strange that she was here now, but the constant demands of her job had always come first.
"Autumn at the lake is always so peaceful, so quiet. This seemed like a good place to focus on a big project at work."
"Quiet?" Dorothy laughed. "Summer Lake is a hotbed of excitement and intrigue."
"Especially now that hunks like Smith Sullivan and the rest of his family have been spending more and more time here," Helen added with a twinkle in her eyes. "I sure am happy to see William's kids--and you too, Rosa--rally around him the way they have been. He's been too lonely for too many years."
"I've really enjoyed getting to know Drake's father better during the past few months," Rosa said with a smile. Then added with a good-natured wink, "And you're right that the hunkiness of the Sullivan men doesn't hurt a girl one bit."
When everyone laughed, Sarah hoped their attention had permanently headed in another direction. At least until Catherine said, "Sarah, you still haven't told us something unique about yourself."
Another rush of blood moved into her cheeks. Before she knew the words were coming, she admitted, "I don't remember how to knit."
"
Nonsense," Dorothy said as she reached into her canvas bag for some large needles and soft blue yarn, so much like the skein Sarah had been admiring earlier that morning. "It's like riding a bicycle. You never forget how to knit, no matter how long it's been. Take these."
Keeping her hands firmly in her lap, Sarah said, "Thanks, but you don't need to give me your--"
"Take them."
She had no choice but to respond to the firm note in the woman's voice. "Okay."
"I can show you how to cast on if you want," Christie offered, deftly winding the yarn around the needles. "Any idea what you'd like to make?"
Sarah began to shake her head, but then she realized that if she had to sit here all night, she might as well start something she might use when she was done with it. "A shawl." The one she'd been wearing in her earlier vision. A vision that had starred the very man she was going to be seeing tonight.
"Good idea. With the size of these circular needles and the gauge of the yarn, it should knit up really quick and look great. How about a simple triangle pattern? You'll only have to do a yarn over at the beginning and end of every other row, with all the other rows being a simple knit stitch."
After Christie showed her how to do the alternating rows, Sarah softly said, "You don't know how much I wish you'd been here this afternoon when I took over the store for my grandmother. You would have been so much more helpful than I was at answering customers' questions."
"I'm sure you did great," Christie said kindly, "but definitely call me next time you need help. I can run over from the inn."
"And if I'm around, I'm always happy to help too," Rosa offered.
They were both so sweet to offer. But Sarah had learned her lesson this afternoon. There wasn't going to be a next time for her at the store. From here on out, she was going to focus on her real job and leave the yarn to people who knew what to do with it.
For the next hour or so, while the women in the group tackled their works in progress and talked about people she didn't know anymore, she worked diligently on a shawl she'd never planned on making. Though she wasn't a real member of the knitting group, it was surprisingly nice to be in a room with a group of women relaxing together.
